Pre Approved!!

We received our Pre-Approval today!!!!!

We came back home from traveling yesterday and I woke up this morning in my usual post-travel state of exhaustion and didn't want to get out of bed. I opened the computer to check my email expecting there to be nothing there, like there never was, so it seemed. My mood immediately changed to elation when I read the subject line, Pre-Approval! I called Justin and the boys in and they came running and together on our bed this morning we read the words that we have been waiting to hear. He is ours and we are going to fervently pursue bringing him HOME!

And now we can finally share his sweet little face with YOU!!

Chen Qi Long

Birthday: 3/15/2010

I know a mama's heart is always biased, but he just has the sweetest face. We feel like he just looks like he belongs to the R family! :)

A few questions that we have asked ourselves and received encouragement about:

1. What is a PA? This is a statement from the government of China that our family is officially promised to this child and no one else can view his file. In a nutshell, we have 6 months to finish our paperwork and submit our Dossier packet to China and then they will go over our information and issue a formal Letter of Acceptance, and after a little bit more paperwork between the US government and China, we will be given a travel date to go pick him up. 

2. What could happen from now until we pick him up that could change our status with him? Can this PA later on get denied? We asked our case worker these questions and of course there are always things that can happen, and she encouraged us that she had never seen that happen. The only time someone would not receive approval after receiving PA is if they were not telling the truth in their original paperwork. People have stopped the process on their own after receiving a PA, but she said it is very rare for someone to have a disruption for some reason outside of their own control. Basically, she told us to relax. Haha.

3. And our really really big question...Since we live nearby, are we allowed to meet him now? We have submitted a request to go visit him. Our agency frequently works with expats and our case worker says sometimes the orphanage says yes, sometimes they say no. All we can do is try and then wait. We are becoming professional wait-ers. 

Out of Our Hands

Our case worker was pretty quick this time and emailed us our Letter of Intent (LOI) packet of more papers that we needed to get together. Luckily we have done most of the paperwork for our home study already and had most of the papers pretty handy. We typed up a letter and crossed a few t's and dotted some i's and got that packet sent off today. Now it's in someone else's hand and we wait.

Normally, this can take 1-2 weeks to hear back from China on whether or not they give us a Pre-Approval to adopt Qi Long. But we have heard it happening in as little as 4 days, so we are hoping for that!

We are so ready to share his picture with you!

Complete Joy

God is so good. When we pray, He listens. When we ask Him to speak, He does. He is faithful.

We received the updated special focus list from our agency this weekend. We spent the day yesterday looking through it and as we stopped and read each story, we couldn't shake the feeling that we were somehow "cheating" on our child. It honest to goodness felt like we were setting one of our children aside and trying to find someone else to replace him. It felt horrible.

We spent Sunday morning in fellowship with our friends, like we do every Sunday. We spent the morning praying together over our decision and what it would mean for us and for our future child. One of our friends told us that it seemed like we needed to decide which was more important to us, our life, our job, and our call here in rural Asia or our love and our call to this little boy. Justin and I decided yesterday afternoon that we were done fighting this feeling. Maybe what we had been seeing as a closed door, wasn't a closed door. We decided to allow ourselves a little more time of opening our hearts here. We had spent the last week trying to shut him out of our hearts, but it wasn't working. So we began to talk about what a decision like this would mean for our family. We had come into this journey planning that we would add a member to our family and live life like we had been living. A new life of course, with its own challenges and chaos, but for the most part, no major changes, for example the location of our home. We ended up coming up with a couple of plans, let's call them Plan B, Plan C and Plan D. We figured it couldn't hurt to have enough to make it to Plan Z, right?

This morning, I woke up and decided to do some research. I began looking up information about expats living overseas with children that have special needs and I found some encouragement. I decided to write an email to our good friends who have a huge passion for our job and also a huge passion for adoption. I shared with them our struggles and our confusion and asked them how do you decide between one or the other? They replied back and encouraged us to truly seek the Lord and His heart and to trust as He leads. We know that we are in this town, today, for a purpose. And we need to fulfill that purpose well with our whole hearts. We also know that we are called to adopt, and we also need to fulfill that calling with our whole hearts. And we will worry about what tomorrow brings when we get there and trust God to do the leading.

So this afternoon, as I poured over the Scriptures, asking God to speak to me specifically today, He answered me. I went through many verses in Psalm that proclaim the importance of trusting in Him, our Rock and our Deliverer. And then I ended up in John 15. Such familiar verses to so many of us, especially in our lives for the past 2 years. A theme in our company has been Abide. And I was reminded once again of the importance of abiding in Him and allowing Him to direct our paths. But for some reason today, John 15:11 stuck out to me, and I wasn't quite sure why, but I knew that it was something God was impressing on me. "I have written this, so that your joy may be complete." I opened my devotional that I have been reading through and flipped it to August 15, the day that Qi Long was found. And guess what verse was listed for that day. Yes, John 15:11. Not the whole passage, but just this one verse. And then this is what I read off to the side. "Joy is the experience of knowing you are unconditionally loved." A quote by Henry Nouwen. What more could God want a child of his to know on one of the hardest days of his life? That he was unconditionally loved.

We sent an email to our case worker tonight and told her that we were ready to take the next steps to make Qi Long a part of our family. We don't know where this next year will lead us. He could have medical issues that take us away from our job, he could not. All we know is that he is already so unconditionally loved by us, but more than any one, by his Heavenly Father, who lavishly fills my heart with confirmation in the little details!

Worth It

We heard back from the orphanage and they are standing by what is in his files. They are saying that he does not have what our pediatricians are saying that he has and all he needs is some personal love and attention and that his medical delays will resolve on their own. We also received a video of him which, honestly ripped my heart in two. It's one thing looking at a picture and another thing watching a video of a child playing and being a real human kid. A real human kid that doesn't have a mama or a daddy, or two brothers and a dog. He doesn't have anybody that is there for him no matter what. He no doubt has people that care about him and care for him, but it's not permanent. They go home and change shifts and his life is one big ball of who is coming next? But even though they are confident of this, it is still very hard for us to let go of what makes the most sense. Our agency encouraged us that you don't normally find such drastic differences in the files vs. doctors. But we all know that it happens. Are they lying, do they just not know, do they not have the resources to know truly what is going on with him? Or is it really what they say and it's just all a big coincidence that all of his symptoms point to this? Our realism says, "There is no way he doesn't have this. 2+2 always equals 4, no matter how you turn it. But our hopefulness says, "There's so much we don't know."

It's Sunday. Tuesday will be 3 weeks since we first saw him. Today is 2 weeks since we opened our hearts to the idea that he could actually be our son. And as of today we have spent 1 week trying to let him go. This is not a natural process of the heart. At all. But neither was my own adoption.

It wasn't natural for God the Father to send His own Son into the world to grow up only to die, in order for me to be adopted into His family. It wasn't natural to watch his Son grow up into a beautiful young man whose very breath was only used to bring glory to His Father, just to watch him suffer in agony and pain. None of that was natural, and yet it was worth it. God saw that I was worth it. And I know that no matter what happens on this journey, no matter how painful it is on the way there, in the end, whoever our son or daughter is, it will be worth it.

I am praying these words over this sweet little boy today. "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jer. 29:11

We Just Have to Try

It's Friday night. We locked in Qi Long's file on Tuesday. (Technically, Monday, but wouldn't you know that our case worker is on vacation this week, so she didn't get the email right away.) She told us to let her know any questions that we had and she would ask the orphanage to clarify and that she would request a video for us. We contacted anyone that we knew that had any kind of connection with a pediatrician. We are recommended to have a pediatrician picked out for this very purpose, so that when you receive a referral and have a time limit, you can quickly get advice. Well, we didn't think we would be on this step yet, so we didn't have a doctor lined up. So we have been grasping for straws. I found out that the pediatrician we have used since Stephen was born is no longer in our hometown. I had to do some stalking, but I finally found him in a far away state and emailed his office trying to get in touch with him. They responded back and said that he was out of town until Monday, but to go ahead and email him and he would get back to us then. Why does everyone have to be on vacation during one of the most important weeks of our lives?! We sent his files to a few other friends, hoping someone would be able to give us some encouragement, one way or the other. And now we wait.

Another thing that drew our attention to this little boy is the fact that he lives fairly close to us, the province next door to be exact. The train ride is only 4 hours to the city where he lives, which is VERY close considering it used to be a 12 hour overnight train ride. Thank you technology for the fast train. I so wish America would make bullet trains across the country! As we have sat at home this week, thinking about him and praying for him, we can't help but think that we are in a place where we could literally just go visit him. Most people don't even have that opportunity simply because they live in America and the child is in China. It's not economically or logistically possible for most. But we are here! We asked our case worker if she thought we could go visit him, and she said she thought that would be wonderful, but she would have to ask the orphanage.

Did I mention the fact that she is on vacation? It's been a few days since we heard from her and we have to make a decision by Tuesday. If you have known Justin and I for any amount of time, you know that we are pretty spontaneous when it comes to travel. (Having small children is trying to cure me of that, but not quite.) We have talked about it all day and we just decided to go buy train tickets tonight and we are going to go tomorrow. We need to do some medical checks anyway, so while we are there, we are going to go to the orphanage and just see what happens. At the end of the day, I can't just sit here being this close and not try. In 4 days, we will make a huge decision for our family and for this little boy and if we have the smallest, slightest possibility of a chance that we could even just catch a glimpse of him, we are going to try.

Justin and I both are very much here and now, follow our hearts personality types. Sometimes, we feel foolish. Sometimes we feel like we live in a completely fictional world where we are almost 30 and we have two kids. We still feel 18 years old most days. But in the end, we know that God gave us our passions for a reason, and we are going to do our best to funnel that passion into things that bring Him glory. And He will have to be the one to slow us down because life is too short to live in a state of should I stay or should I go. Our default will most likely always be to go, to do, to see, to hear, to feel and to try. We have failed an awful lot of times, but we try. And we believe that this little boy is worth it. We don't know what to expect. Most likely nothing will happen. Most likely the orphanage won't let us in and most likely we will come home not feeling much different than we do right now. But we are praying for Father to open doors for us this weekend. We are praying that He will give us some guidance, even if it's in a different way than we are looking for.